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Three Palestinians Killed in Standoff with Security Forces in West Bank

Palestinians inspect the damage done to a mosque, after a reported attack by Israeli settlers, in the town of Marda near the West Bank city of Salfit on December 20, 2024. (AFP)
Palestinians inspect the damage done to a mosque, after a reported attack by Israeli settlers, in the town of Marda near the West Bank city of Salfit on December 20, 2024. (AFP)
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Three Palestinians Killed in Standoff with Security Forces in West Bank

Palestinians inspect the damage done to a mosque, after a reported attack by Israeli settlers, in the town of Marda near the West Bank city of Salfit on December 20, 2024. (AFP)
Palestinians inspect the damage done to a mosque, after a reported attack by Israeli settlers, in the town of Marda near the West Bank city of Salfit on December 20, 2024. (AFP)

A Palestinian man and his son were killed in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, local medical officials said on Friday, as a month-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and armed militant groups in the town continued.

Separately, a security forces officer died in what Palestinian Authority (PA) officials said was an accident, bringing to six the total number of the security forces to have died in the operation in Jenin which began on Dec. 5. There were no further details.

The PA denied that its forces killed the 44-year-old man and his son, who were shot as they stood on the roof of their house in the Jenin refugee camp, a crowded quarter that houses descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven out in the 1948 Middle East war. The man's daughter was also wounded in the incident, Reuters reported.

At least eight Palestinians have been killed in Jenin over the past month, one of them a member of the armed Jenin Brigades, which includes members of the armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions.

Palestinian security forces moved into Jenin last month in an operation officials say is aimed at suppressing armed groups of "outlaws" who have built up a power base in the city and its adjacent refugee camp.

The operation has deepened splits among Palestinians in the West Bank, where the PA enjoys little popular support but where many fear being dragged into a Gaza-style conflict with Israel if the militant groups strengthen their hold.

Jenin, in the northern West Bank, has been a center of Palestinian militant groups for decades and armed factions have resisted repeated attempts to dislodge them by the Israeli military over the years.

The PA set up three decades ago under the Oslo interim peace accords, exercises limited sovereignty in parts of the West Bank and has claimed a role in administering Gaza once fighting in the enclave is concluded.

The PA is dominated by the Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas and has long had a tense relationship with Hamas, with which it fought a brief civil war in Gaza in 2006 before Hamas drove it out of the enclave.

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Arab World

Hezbollah Leader Nasrallah Was Killed Last Year inside the War Operations Room, Aide Says

People look through the rubble of buildings which were leveled on September 27 by Israeli strikes that targeted and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, on September 29, 2024. (AFP)
People look through the rubble of buildings which were leveled on September 27 by Israeli strikes that targeted and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, on September 29, 2024. (AFP)
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Hezbollah Leader Nasrallah Was Killed Last Year inside the War Operations Room, Aide Says

People look through the rubble of buildings which were leveled on September 27 by Israeli strikes that targeted and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, on September 29, 2024. (AFP)
People look through the rubble of buildings which were leveled on September 27 by Israeli strikes that targeted and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, on September 29, 2024. (AFP)

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike last year while inside the group's war operations room, according to new details Sunday disclosed by a senior Hezbollah official.

A series of Israeli airstrikes flattened several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sept. 27, 2023, killing Nasrallah. The Lebanese Health Ministry said six people died. According to news reports, Nasrallah and other senior officials were meeting underground.

The assassination of Nasrallah, who had led Hezbollah for 32 years, turned months of low-level strikes between Israel and the fighters into all-out war that battered much of southern and eastern Lebanon for two months until a US-brokered ceasefire took effect Nov. 27.

Nasrallah “used to lead the battle and war from this location,” top Hezbollah security official Wafiq Safa told a news conference Sunday near the site where Nasrallah was killed. He said Nasrallah died in the war operations room. He did not offer other details.

Lebanese media had reported that Safa was a target of Israeli airstrikes in central Beirut before the ceasefire but appeared unscathed.

During the first phase of the ceasefire, Hezbollah is supposed to move its fighters, weapons and infrastructure away from southern Lebanon north of the Litani River, while Israeli troops that invaded southern Lebanon need to withdraw all within 60 days. Lebanese army soldiers are to deploy in large numbers and alongside United Nations peacekeepers be the sole armed presence in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon and Hezbollah have been critical of ongoing Israeli strikes and overflights across the country and for only withdrawing from two of dozens of Lebanese villages it controls. Israel says that the Lebanese military has not done its share in dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.

Hezbollah’s current leader Naim Qassem in a televised address Saturday warned that its fighters could strike Israel if its troops don’t leave the south by the end of the month.

Safa said that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who negotiated the ceasefire deal with Washington, told Hezbollah that the government will meet with US envoy Amos Hochstein soon. “And in light of what happens, then there will be a position,” said Safa.

Hochstein had led the shuttle diplomacy efforts to reach the fragile truce.